The present invention relates to an optical disk image forming method of connecting a computer and an optical disk image forming apparatus in a communication state and transmitting image data from the computer to the optical disk image forming apparatus so as to form a visual image in a label surface or a data recording surface of an optical disk, to an optical disk image forming apparatus thereof, and to an computer readable recording medium storing an optical disk image forming program therefor. Particularly, the present invention relates to a technology that can increase a degree of freedom for design of an optical disk image forming apparatus and can allow an operator to freely set an image forming condition according to a degree of freedom for setting of the image forming condition allowable for each optical disk image forming apparatus.
In Patent Documents 1 and 2, there is disclosed a image forming technology in which an image forming layer is provided by a thermosensitive layer or a photosensitive layer at a label surface of an optical disk, such as a recordable CD or a recordable DVD, and a visual image is formed in the image forming layer by irradiating laser light modulated according to image data from an optical pick-up onto the image forming layer by using an optical disk recording apparatus which can records data on a data recording layer of the optical disk so that. Further, in Patent Document 3, there is disclosed a technology in which laser light modulated according to image data is irradiated onto the data recording layer of the optical disk so as to form pits, and forms a visual image in the data recording layer, instead of recording data thereon.    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2002-203321    Patent Document 2: JP-A-2004-5848    Patent Document 3: JP-A-2004-355764
Further, according to another conventional technology for forming an image on an optical disk surface, image data is generated on a specific image forming condition (a unit transfer amount of an optical pick-up in a disk radial direction, a disk rotation speed, an encoding speed for encoding image data so as to generate a modulated signal of laser light, or the like). Accordingly, a degree of freedom for design of an optical disk image forming apparatus is little. Further, the image forming condition has an effect on an image forming speed and image forming quality (resolution and contrast ratio of a formed image). Since a known image forming program that is executed by a host computer is designed based on a specific image forming condition, a user cannot freely set an image forming condition according to an optical disk image forming apparatus.